Overview

Monetize video on the web. So was the charter handed down by executives at Hearst-Argyle Television, Inc. (NYSE: HTV) to their technology projects team. HTV delivers local news to 18% of US households through 29 owned and operated television stations. As the convergence of television and the internet has accelerated in the past year, HTV was looking to capitalize not only the brand awareness created by video-rich websites, but the rapidly unfolding advertising models as well.

Key to their strategy was finding a solution that could slipstream into HTV’s workflow. “We needed to automate our workflow without disrupting the activities of the newsroom. While our process was standardized throughout our stations, it was highly manual,” said Joe Addalia, director of technology projects for HTV. “This was the turning point in our analysis. We realized that we needed a partner to make this project a success. That’s when we turned to Anystream®.”

Solution

HTV knew of Anystream’s automated digital media production software, Agility, for its ability to extract video from Avid® editing systems and seamlessly repurpose it into any number of formats But HTV was looking for more than production capabilities; they required a future-proof digital media strategy. For Addalia, the answer came in the form of robust metadata management. “Metadata is king. While producing the varying flavors of video is an important foundation for our strategy, it isn’t hard with today’s automation technologies. The challenge lies in how you’ll manage, search and track video for tomorrow’s opportunities.”

Addalia chose to take full advantage of the Anystream Media Lifecycle Platform™ by centrally deploying its media management engine, Velocity™ in HTV’s North Carolina data center while an Anystream Agility® system was installed locally at 11 of its stations.

“Anystream’s media management capabilities solidified our decision. By preserving asset metadata, we have the intelligence needed to quickly track and reuse our content as opportunities develop,“ said Addalia. “And with built-in publishing modules for the most popular video destinations on the web, we have the confidence that we route content to any outlet as HTV unveils new content distribution partnerships.”

Agility archives 30- and 60-minute newscasts while simultaneously parsing it into individual packages. The selected stories are transcoded into Flash and Windows Media formats while the newscast is still in progress. Acting as the command center for media operations, Velocity harvests metadata directly from the HTV’s broadcast news production system instance at each station. Velocity matches the completed video files with the associated thumbnail, XML and metadata, and automatically ships the package to distribution partner Internet Broadcasting and user-generated video giant, YouTube.

“Our time-to-web has been slashed from 20-30 minutes to three minutes using Anystream. This is a huge content advantage, allowing us to increase the number of stories published to our sites from roughly four to 20 per day. As an added bonus, our quality has gone through the roof,” said Addalia. With the quantity of timely news published to affiliate websites swelling by 80%, the inventory of pre-roll advertising likewise skyrocketed.

• Hearst-Argyle Television
• Accuweather
• SPEED
• VRT
• ZDF
• RAI
• BT
• NFL Films
• SCRIPPS Networks
• CNN
• sky
• T-Online